Report: Republicans who voted no on deal to be barred from Super Committee?

posted at 3:55 pm on August 2, 2011 by Allahpundit

The answer’s no, but whether it was no all along or whether things quickly changed after Steve Hayes pulled the pin on this grenade at the Standard this morning, only McConnell knows.

Three Republican Senate sources tell TWS that senators who vote against the deal will be ineligible to serve on the so-called “supercommittee” for deficit reduction that the legislation creates.

While there’s certain logic to such a policy, it could be self-defeating. Excluding those who vote against the debt deal will ensure that some of the most fiscally conservative members of the Senate Republican caucus, including most of its freshmen, will be reading about the committee’s activities in the newspaper rather than guiding its decisions. Among those who have already declared their opposition to the deal: libertarian-leaning senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul; Jim DeMint, the aggressive fiscal hawk from South Carolina; conservative reformers Ron Johnson from Wisconsin and Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania; the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, Jeff Sessions; and Florida’s Marco Rubio, already one of the highest-profile conservatives in Congress.

More worrisome for conservatives, however, is that private whip counts in the Senate found that some 20 Republicans expressed support for the proposals that came out of the Gang of Six.

Roughly five minutes after that story hit the wires, McConnell’s spokesman rushed out a statement insisting that everyone is eligible regardless of their vote. I’d be amazed if they even considered the alternative. After all the outrage among the base over the deal and all the lip service paid to tea partiers by the GOP leadership, what else could the reaction be if most of Congress’s tea-party heroes were summarily bounced from the next big round of deficit reduction? It doesn’t even make sense on the merits: A no vote on round one doesn’t necessarily mean a no vote on round two (although, admittedly, it’s likely), and if a tea-party Committee member did vote to support the Committee’s recommendations, it’d be a huge coup in terms of getting the base and other fiscal cons in Congress on board.

All of which makes me think the original plan — at least before Hayes’s piece dropped — was simply to appoint a couple of tea partiers who voted yes on the deal. Fully 59 freshmen supported the bill in the House; Allen West was probably the most visible and influential among the base, so Boehner might reward him with a seat. In the Senate, McConnell will stay away from DeMint and Rand Paul after last year’s “unpleasantness” in the Kentucky Senate primary, but if he wants to build some grudging grassroots support for the Committee, he could appoint Rubio or, if he’s really daring, Mike Lee. All of these people will almost certainly vote no on a final deal, of course, but politics is politics and constituencies have to be satisfied. In fact, I wonder if McConnell will balance out the tea-party member on the Committee with a retiree like Jon Kyl, who’ll be free to provide the crucial seventh vote in order to send the final package to Congress if need be.

Update: They really might have to appoint Zombie Reagan to win over FreedomWorks honcho Matt Kibbe:

“And I’ve got to tell you, this super-committee — this is an abdication of congressional responsibility. It’s their job to pass a budget resolution. It’s their job to pass appropriations bills. And just because they can’t do it doesn’t mean that the Constitution allows them to kick the can to some super-committee.”

Kibbe said the next phase of the battle will include a “tea party debt commission” that will work parallel to the new bipartisan committee that will recommend deficit-cutting maneuvers. The “commission” will include field hearings and events in battleground presidential states, Kibbe said.

All the more reason for the leadership to appoint tea partiers to the Super Committee. If they don’t, they run a greater risk of fiscal cons in Congress embracing the tea-party commission’s recommendations instead (which will probably happen regardless), and that’ll increase the risk that Congress will pass nothing and the triggers will kick in. I wonder how long it’ll be before MoveOn or PCCC or whoever announces they’re forming their own debt commission too to pull Democrats to the left. 90 percent tax rates or bust!

Update: Meanwhile, Pelosi’s working hard to make sure that the Super Committee accomplishes nothing productive:

At a pre-recess press conference Tuesday afternoon, TPM asked House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) whether the people she appoints to the committee will make the same stand she made during the debt limit fight — that entitlement benefits — as opposed to provider payments, waste and other Medicare spending — should be off limits.

In short, yes.

“That is a priority for us,” Pelosi said. “But let me say it is more than a priority – it is a value… it’s an ethic for the American people. It is one that all of the members of our caucus share. So that I know that whoever’s at that table will be someone who will fight to protect those benefits.”

In that case, McConnell might as well appoint DeMint, Paul, and Lee. Or better yet, don’t appoint anyone and walk away right now. It’s a sham.

Blowback

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Works for me. The TPers and Cons should stay a million miles away from this stink bomb. When it goes off, they will take the blame, instead of the RINOs who cooked the dang thing up. Stock it with RINOs and waive goodbye to them as they go over the falls.

Huge vote of confidence in the market today. DJIA shot way up, bank stocks in the S&P are having a field day, and the gold sell off is just brutal. I’m sad I bought mine at $800 per ounce, I’m losing my shirt! Wait…

Yesterday, I heard Judge Napolitano say the bill might be unConstitutional. That a Congressman could file suit based on the fact his Constitutional Rights as a Congressman were being abridged by this bill.

Why does it matter who’s on the ridiculous panel? There’s absolutely no doubt that the same Ruling Class that just shoved this sham bill down our throats will stack the panel with people who share their concerns, and their only concern is that the spending binge be allowed to continue and that there must never be any real spending cuts, only theoretical.

Obama didn’t feel like he needed to follow the budget he had just negotiated when chose to fund his de-funded Czars. So I’m not sure why Congress should be bound to some budget arrangement/voting procedure.

Not only a sham, but more authoritarian cancer. Once any bureaucracy is created, it doesn’t go away without amputation, and never consents to its own surgical removal from government. /not even it it’s “free” health care

Yesterday, I heard Judge Napolitano say the bill might be unConstitutional. That a Congressman could file suit based on the fact his Constitutional Rights as a Congressman were being abridged by this bill.

[huckleberryfriend on August 2, 2011 at 4:04 PM]

Well, I suspect it is possible. All spending bills must originate in the House. Passing a bill which allows the Senate to ‘deem as passed’ a fiscal budget for 2012 and 2013 before the House has taken up any appropriations bill for either year, certainly seems unconstitutional.

Poor McConnell got screwed by the hobbits again. Now to save face he’ll have to put someone from the Terrorist Tea Party on the committiee now. He should keep this crap to himself if he doesn’t want to include the Hobbits on this sham or word to get out that’s what he’s planning on doing.

Senator Jeff Sessions said:
“We’re getting pretty far away from the traditions of this body when you don’t publicly debate a budget, you create a committee of limited numbers of people to produce legislation that can’t be amended,”

This Committee is Unconstitutional on many fronts. It needs to be challenged immediately.

This was set up so that there would be NO agreement on debt reduction and the automatic cuts would go into effect: Medicare & Defense.

I have no confidence in the House or the Senate with the leaders and some of the members now in place.

Everyone but the Congress is concerned about this. Isn’t that strange to even say?

I understand where you are coming from; just don’t know what the answer is yet.

Let’s give credit where credit is due, this is the John Boehner Compromise Commission, and the lobbyists love it.

This is the Central Committee of a Command and Control economy at it’s worst where businesses have to be well connected to Central Committee members in order to survive. Where influence peddling, graft, and corruption run rampant. Where it no longer matters if you build a better product at a cheaper price, all that matters is you are a loyal party member who can sway the opinion of a member of the Central Committee.

This Central Committee will decide if it’s the teacher’s union who gets the big bucks through grants to education, or ACORN getting funding for ‘outreach’ to communities in need of assistance.

If language means anything anymore (which seems in doubt) the name implies a committee either bigger in size to Congress or superior to it in authority or power? What is this super-committee? And why do they call it “super”?

Now let’s talk about taxes. President Obama continues to campaign for tax increases on the filthy rich who don’t pay their fair share. The GOP Leadership seem to believe that since the Bush tax rates are assumed to expire at the end of 2012, that raising taxes even higher is impossible. They must have been really liquored up when someone sold them that idea.

There will be an army of corporate tax lobbyists, and anti-corporate lobbyists descending upon those hapless republics who ‘win’ appointment to John Boehner’s Compromise Commission each with a powerful presentation why their corporate client should be exempt, or granted special tax treatment, followed by an even larger, more public, and much louder army of lobbyists demanding higher taxes on big oil, big pharma, big tobacco, since it is only fair that those with the most money should be making the greatest sacrifice for the greater good.

You thought Obama’s exploitation of the debt crisis was outrageous, wait until you get a load of what comes next.

At a pre-recess press conference Tuesday afternoon, TPM asked House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) whether the people she appoints to the committee will make the same stand she made during the debt limit fight — that entitlement benefits — as opposed to provider payments, waste and other Medicare spending — should be off limits.

In short, yes.

“That is a priority for us,” Pelosi said. “But let me say it is more than a priority – it is a value… it’s an ethic for the American people. It is one that all of the members of our caucus share. So that I know that whoever’s at that table will be someone who will fight to protect those benefits.”

This is actually quite edifying, and I hope the Republicans will hold the Democrats to it. If Democrats are going to the mat for only programs that provide direct benefits to people, that should make it relatively easy to agree on what other programs to cut. For example, looking at HUD, let’s keep the funding for Section 8 housing vouchers and rent subsidies, but eliminate the Community Development Block Grant program which is just a $5 billion transfer of borrowed money to city governments.

The only thing the government does a halfway decent job of, other than defense, is writing checks to people. So let’s start eliminating programs that try to do other things and do them badly.

America’s wonderful father figure whose administrative legacy includes the “bipartisan” appointments of Sandra Day O’Connor and the heir apparent to Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan (who effectively corrupted our long term economic strength in favor of pyramid schemes favoring the globalist financial corporatists), supportive propaganda and congressional financial engagement on behalf of the Taliban, illegal arms deals and illegal wars providing Obama with precedence, amnesty for illegal aliens, and the gun ownership control of the Brady Bill.

You call on that record to return? Why bother when it’s in Spades all around us.

Reagan knew how to play the crowd as an All-American anti-communist making neoconservatism seem “sincere”. Of course his heart was in the right place at the right time. But don’t worship a myth unless you admit the demigod has faults as well as virtues.

Ronald Reagan did not promote cuts in federal bureaucracy. Rather, federal bureaucracies grew in size and authority during the Reagan administration while losing transparency in governance.

If it’s a precursor to the Tea Party you need from the Cold War era, study Barry GOLDWATER, Libertarian-Republican dubbed a “war hawk”, unashamed to quickly destroy whatever “domino communist threat” (bomb the dykes and flood them out) and bring our troops home from Kennedy’s Vietnam escapade. Being effective was not “compassionate” enough for the “peace dove” LBJ Democrats (who would convert to the Republican Party later as “neoconservatives”). LBJ having “inherited” the presidency from JFK (another story), made a difficult pseudo-incumbent to defeat after the assassinations of 1963-64. Once elected, against unanimous advice that LBJ got “to get out of Vietnam before making another American fiasco like the Korean War” (LBJ Library taped conversations with congressional members), LBJ fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin affair. If you’re confused still, Nixon won on the Kissinger neoconservative promise that he had a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War. Gerald Ford “inherited” the presidency from Nixon/Agnew via appointment, but after Nixon’s Watergate scandal, Ford had less of a chance in hell than Goldwater ever had to win. After Carter’s fiasco, incapable of either rescuing or diplomatically arranging the release of the American Embassy hostages held in Tehran by Carter’s Islamofascist pets, Ronald Reagan’s strong public optimistic image made him a breeze into office. And with Carter gone, Tehran’s theocracy sent the American prisoners home immediately.

America’s wonderful father figure whose administrative legacy includes the “bipartisan” appointments of Sandra Day O’Connor and the heir apparent to Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan (who effectively corrupted our long term economic strength in favor of pyramid schemes favoring the globalist financial corporatists), supportive propaganda and congressional financial engagement on behalf of the Taliban, illegal arms deals and illegal wars providing Obama with precedence, amnesty for illegal aliens, and the gun ownership control of the Brady Bill.

You call on that record to return? Why bother when it’s in Spades all around us.

Ronald Reagan did not promote cuts in federal bureaucracy. Rather, federal bureaucracies grew in size and authority during the Reagan administration while we lost transparency in the banking/investment industry with the Federal Reserve.

Granted, Reagan made a good president. But we suffered years of massive unemployment during his administration’s huge recession that closed aerospace manufacturing across America. Taxes were low, and so was the industry’s employment.

One more question: Is the determination of the committee binding? How can Congress override it?

[flicker on August 2, 2011 at 5:08 PM]

No, it is not binding. Each Chamber needs to vote up/down on the proposals (don’t know if it’s a lump sum type proposal but I suspect it is). If it doesn’t pass both Chambers, then a predetermined across the board cut automatically goes into affect.

If language means anything anymore (which seems in doubt) the name implies a committee either bigger in size to Congress or superior to it in authority or power? What is this super-committee? And why do they call it “super”?

What will it be capable of doing and who will decide who sits on it?

flicker on August 2, 2011 at 4:44 PM

According to the bill, this a joint select committee. Their purpose is to find $1.2 T in deficit reduction and they abide by a strict set of guidelines (as outlined by the bill) and parliamentary procedure. 7/12 of the panel must agree on each recommendation in order for the same to be considered by the whole of Congress. The committee is dissolved in January 2012.

Congressional leaders decide who sits on the panel of 12. One co-chair is picked by Boehner and the other by Reid. Total members are as follows:

3 House Rs, 3 House Ds
3 Senate Ds, 3 Senate Rs

If the do not reach the full amount, a trigger mechanism kicks-in to cut pre-decided programs by equal %s. So if they are $500B short, each side gets their pre-decided programs cut by $250 in automatic cuts come 2013.

Thanks. So can it raise taxes? And when do the two parties select what programs will receive mandatory default cuts? Has it been done already? Or will this be part of the dickering that the committee will undertake?

Will Pelosi be able to say, “If you make us mad, we’ll not vote at all and we’ll select the armed services to take the mandatory default”?

And right on cue, John “My friends across the aisle” McCain announces one of those he would like to see on the Committee: Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio)!

A Tea Party Senator with an avowed distaste for Big Govt.? Not really.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) would be a good candidate for the so-called Super Committee charged with making $1.5 trillion worth of cuts to the federal deficit.

“I’m not making the decisions but one of my candidates would be Rob Portman, former head of OMB. A very sober, knowledgeable person, I think those are the kind of people that are going to be on this committee,” told Neil Cavuto Tuesday on Fox News.

Thanks. So can it raise taxes? And when do the two parties select what programs will receive mandatory default cuts? Has it been done already? Or will this be part of the dickering that the committee will undertake?

Will Pelosi be able to say, “If you make us mad, we’ll not vote at all and we’ll select the armed services to take the mandatory default”?

flicker on August 2, 2011 at 5:56 PM

They cannot raise rates (mostly due to the baseline) but they could eliminate certain deductions and loopholes. However, that too needs 7/12 votes in committee and it would also have to pass the House first. The sequester cannot raise taxes at all.

With regards to the sequester (which only occurs if they do not reach the target), the Rs would take cuts to defense and the Dems mostly to Medicare and other social programs. It only occurs if they fail to reach $1.2T in deficit reduction but it is not all-or-nothing.

The Democrats could decide to be difficult for the sake of being difficult and/or because of their strongly-held socialist principles but they also incentive to avoid this. It will be difficult for them to run on Republicans making cuts to Medicare if they themselves allow cuts to Medicare. The Republicans on the committee can play the situation to their advantage, too.

Regardless, one major problem with the sequester, is that is difficult to enforce. Congress is bound by law to obey but that does not necessarily mean that they will. If they fail to reach a complete agreement and ignore the sequester, they would have to negotiate another compromise (since Obama only receives $900B of the increase now).

We do need strong fiscal conservatives on that committee. We also need fiscal policy wonks. And we need people who can horse-trade and WIN while doing it. One of those slots must go to Paul Ryan. MUST go to Ryan. Let’s see whom they find for the rest.

My link should have gone here. A majority of the time, joint committees do not craft and report legislation, but there have been times when they have been called to do just that (usually regarding vital issues).

So this is “my people will call your people” before the 2012 election.

By the way, I told you the downgrade would not happen.

What really bothers me is the gross propagandizing about a default and a downgrade by Geithner and the NYT, et all, to force the deal, and then once the debt ceiling is raised to suddenly rethink the issue, retract their dire warnings and walk away burping and satisfied.

So this is “my people will call your people” before the 2012 election.

By the way, I told you the downgrade would not happen.

What really bothers me is the gross propagandizing about a default and a downgrade by Geithner and the NYT, et all, to force the deal, and then once the debt ceiling is raised to suddenly rethink the issue, retract their dire warnings and walk away burping and satisfied.

flicker on August 2, 2011 at 7:19 PM

The downgrade is inevitable. What we just did was buy more time. How much time remains to be seen.